PSYCHIC WARS (1991) is a short (51 min.) made-for-video Japanese animated
occult thriller about a modern Japanese doctor summoned by the spirits of a
group of Buddhist nuns to fight demons in Japan's distant past. It's got
some very nice artwork and design and includes some picturesque scenery of
Kyoto and ancient ruins in the surrounding countryside, done in a style
reminiscent of the charcoal paintings of traditional Japanese art. The
storyline is pretty straightforward, focusing on the hero's travels into
the
past of 5000 years ago to protect the early Japanese people from being
wiped
out by a race of technically advanced demons. The demons don't go quietly
and a handful wind up escaping into the future where the hero, Ukiyo,
continues the battle, only to learn that his girlfriend has a secret link
to
the conflict, putting him in a serious moral and emotional dilemma.

The build-up to the climactic series of battles is quite suspenseful, but
the final action doesn't deliver much of a payoff. Things turn out much too
easy for the hero, a doctor with previously hidden powers that have been
triggered by a dying patient who's a reincarnation of one of the Buddhist
nuns. The demons themselves are huge, grotesque, scaly beasts, too much
like
comic book monsters to be taken seriously. The final segment, in which the
doctor must confront his girlfriend, is quite compelling, but ends too
quickly. Perhaps a bigger budget and a longer running time would have
allowed the story to play out properly. But this is a problem with many
Japanese OAV (Original Animated Video) productions. A story that requires
feature-length or multi-part telling is often forcibly compressed to
standard one-shot OAV length.

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